- Saha, by Cho Nam-Joo. Scribner, $32.99.
There's a line in Saha, Cho Nam-Joo's second novel: "Scenes in life, unlike in movies, tended to play to ill-matched soundtracks". It comes as the main character, Jin-kyung, is feeling bad for a 10-year-old boy who can hear his mum prostituting herself just on the other side of a flimsy wall.
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Jin-kyung - like the boy and his mum - lives in Saha Estates, a neglected apartment complex that now houses squatters and various undocumented misfits. Her brother, Do-kyung, has gone missing. Do-kyung's girlfriend has been found dead. The soundtrack comment makes sense - and Jin-kyung might also have pointed out that the plot of life, unlike in movies, can often feel incoherent and fragmentary.
Which is part of what makes Saha so interesting. It is fiction; set in a tiny country called Town, its dystopian elements (the secretive, faceless, Seven Premiers with their totalitarian power, the authoritarian crackdown on protests, a pandemic followed by sci-fi style experimentation on children) may be familiar from the real-life news stories of the past two years, but in Saha they are heightened and twisted.
And given that it's fiction, it could have had a regular plot, the kind hinted at by the blurb: "Jin-kyung is determined to get to the bottom of things.
On her quest to find the truth, though, she will uncover a reality far darker and crimes far greater than she could ever have imagined."
But a regular "amateur detective takes on the establishment"-plot is not exactly what Saha delivers. Instead the narrative does something more unexpected and perhaps interesting, digressing into side stories about other residents of Saha Estates.
There's the boy and his mum: The boy's name is Ia, one day he catches Jin-kyung singing - and later he disappears. There's the giant Woomi, born with all her teeth erupted and the subject of scientific study ever since. There's Do-kyung and his girlfriend Su, who is a doctor from one of Town's upper classes.
Other compelling characters include a fierce woman in an arranged marriage, an old Granny tending her vegetable patch, and a rebellious scientist at a research hospital.
Something about the kaleidoscope plot and cast makes Saha feel less like a novel and more like a collection of dreamy, surreal sketches from real life: just as in real life there is rarely a single main character, and we'll never really know what happens "in the end". In this novel, that is not a bad thing.
For this reader, who loves the tropes and satisfactions of crime but also to read and think about the various ways in which authors subvert and play with our expectations, Saha is an intriguing, sometimes confusing, and overall delightfully weird read.
